Category: Fiction

The Bigfoot Parade

Will Musgrove

 

As the high school band warmed up down Main Street, Kerry slipped the folded napkin under the wiper of the rusted Ford in the Sneakers Grill parking lot. Written on the napkin in Sharpie were the words I’M PREGNANT, CALL ME, followed by a random phone number. Since life messed with us, we messed with it. It was something to do until he and I got out of Podunk. We lived in a small Midwest town, everyone rattling around like the leftover screws from a piece of IKEA furniture.

 

The door to Sneakers Grill opened. The smell of fried mozzarella sticks drifted on stale, air-conditioned air into the Fuck You July heat, and we took hungry breaths. A family of three, a mom, dad, and son, all wearing We Believe Bigfoot hats, exited the sports bar to search for a spot along the parade route. They nudged their way past fellow believers and disappeared.

 

Everyone in town had their own Bigfoot story except for Kerry and me. My uncle Gary claimed he’d once seen Bigfoot break up a fistfight outside Walmart before vanishing in the trees behind the big-box store. Bigfoot was always performing good deeds, a local superhero, someone you could count on in a pinch.

 

If the missing link existed, why would it care about a small town of slaughterhouse workers, a town where all there is to do is look to the woods for help? Sometimes, I’d put on the Bigfoot onesie pajamas my parents got me for Christmas and wander outside. When someone spotted me and called for help, I ran in the opposite direction. I’d run until I was alone and panting, feeling like I could squish the whole town between my fingertips, feeling like I was better than this place because I recognized a costume when I saw one.

 

Kerry wrote something on another napkin, and the high school band marched down Main. Above the row of spectators, I watched the band members’ hairy hats bob up and down. They looked like groundhogs poking their heads up to see if it’s safe to come out. A float featuring a giant papier-mâché Bigfoot crept along behind the band. Candy scattered the curb, and Kerry and I shoved our way to the front.

 

We stuffed Jolly Ranchers and Tootsie Rolls into our pockets. A middle-aged woman accused us of being too old, but we ignored her and kept grabbing. When our pockets were full, Kerry spun and asked the woman why her precious Bigfoot hadn’t stopped us. To avoid getting our asses kicked, I grabbed Kerry’s arm and dragged him away. Then we walked down the block to the Kum & Go gas station.

 

“I can’t wait to get the hell out of here,” Kerry said. We leaned against the fuel pumps. We didn’t have a grand getaway plan. I guess we hoped we’d wake up one day and be somewhere else, somewhere where no one believed in Bigfoot.

 

Kerry went into the gas station to get a couple of Cokes. I waited outside. Bored, I retrieved a plastic fork from a garbage can and held the fork to my face. I watched the world through the tines. My older cousin Jack’s truck pulled in. Last I’d seen him, he’d just started work at the slaughterhouse, saving to escape, like us. He wasn’t a believer either. He compared believing in Bigfoot to believing in Santa Claus.

 

He got out of his truck, smiling and wearing a We Believe hat. I studied him through the fork’s tines, how he stood behind bars. When he noticed me, I wondered if he saw the same.

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Slowdeatha

Andrew Brininstool

 

I.

 

Rochelle Pickford had gone to El Paso for a lip injection, but the esthetician had been distracted and the Restylane meant for the organ tissue had instead gone into one of the veins. Rochelle’s lips bruised a deep blue-gray, as did most of her right cheek. She was a bad sight. There was nothing to be done about it except to put ice on the bruise and take Valtrex. She didn’t want to see anybody for a few days. But when the doorbell rang on a Friday afternoon and she peeked through the blinds and saw that it was her neighbor, a young man named Ryan, she answered anyway.

 

“Don’t look at me.”

 

He wasn’t. He had more pressing matters. He held a goat in his arms as though it were a child. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I have to go out of town. I wasn’t expecting this.” He wanted her to look after the goat. “It doesn’t need much. Just leave it in the backyard. I’ve got a stake and a leash. Put a bowl of water out. Don’t worry about feeding him. I won’t be gone long. Like I said, I’ve already fed Cline.”

 

Then he was gone, and Rochelle was holding the goat. It happened so fast.

 

She didn’t care for goats. She didn’t care for animals in general, but goats especially. Once, when she was young and visiting her uncle in Kansas, a billy goat had butted her in the ass, sending her flying a few feet across the backyard. It was humiliating and terrifying—the first truly frightening experience in her recollection. The adults all laughed as though they’d never seen such divine comedy before.

 

But Ryan was recently divorced, Rochelle knew. And he’d looked pained to leave Cline with her. Whatever had forced him to leave town must’ve been important. Rochelle still believed you could count on your neighbors.

 

Not that the goat didn’t spook her.

 

To take her mind off of it, she put on a lot of rouge and a wide pair of sunglasses and ran some errands. She dropped off drapes to be hemmed. She went over to the Steven’s Inn and found some of her friends drinking coffee in the restaurant.

 

“I look hideous.”

 

“Hush.”

 

“It’s karaoke at the lounge.”

 

“You know I can’t sing,” Rochelle said.

 

“None of us will be singing. We’ll be playing the slots.”

 

“I might stay home tonight.”

 

“Really, Roche. Your lips don’t look that awful.”

 

“It isn’t that. I’ve taken on a responsibility.”

 

Nobody asked for details.

 

“Dale might be there,” one of them said.

 

Rochelle was glad to be wearing sunglasses. She didn’t want to react. Dale Envers had been her crush forty years earlier. They were town rats in this sleepy mesa of the Chihuahuan plains. They’d had Honors English together, and Dale played baseball. He was smart and often told Rochelle she was smart, too. Smart enough to get into UNM, or maybe even St. John’s. Rochelle didn’t believe him, but Dale had been right about UNM. And she would have attended if, the summer beforehand, she hadn’t met Charlie Pickford, a Penn graduate who’d moved to the area as a geologist. He had been a fine man, and they’d had what Charlie’s snobby brother once called a “little life” together. It was a throwaway comment, but Charlie never spoke to his brother again. Funny. The comment never bothered Rochelle. What more was there to be had? They joined the country club, the Rotary, the Elks. At the time of Charlie’s death, they’d saved enough money to travel—something he had wanted in retirement. It was unfortunate they’d never made good on his dream, but Rochelle was ashamed to admit that the fact left her relieved. She never wanted to see the world. The world scared her.

 

◊

 

When she got home she watched Cline, out in the backyard. He’d found the stump of a pecan tree and was perched upon it, staring out onto the golf course. The tree had had anthracnose, and Charlie cut it down years ago. Now the goat was there.

 

◊

 

At 7:30 p.m., she decided to go to the Lodge. At 7:45, she decided against it. She drew a bath. Five minutes later she drained the bath and drove the short distance up to the hill where Lodge #1558 stood, the stucco repainted the white of a bleached bone.

 

She used to love coming here. Charlie would come home from work early and try on a new suit jacket and make them each a tipple while Rochelle did her makeup. Then, as Charlie pulled their car up the steep drive to the lodge, Rochelle would crane her neck to see which of her friends’ sedans were in the lot.

 

Now it was filled with dually pickups caked in dust. Their back windows had decals of derricks spewing oil. My Boyfriend Slings Pipe, some of them read. Or: Drill ‘er Deep Pull ‘er Wet. The newcomers filled the Lodge with cigar smoke. They wore jeans. They ordered beer and whiskey all night. Many of the fieldworkers had wives back home, but that didn’t seem to matter: little tarty things sat in their laps. As she entered the Lodge Rochelle heard somebody singing, “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother,” and the workers hooted and bayed. By the grace of god, the slot machines sat off away from the lounge in a converted coat closet.

 

It was so much more pleasant here. Here, the machines chirped and rang. They cast red and yellow lights along the ceiling and carpet. Rochelle’s favorite was called The Mystical Lamp. It was a five-reel game; when you hit it big a strange creature, a genie, rose from a cartoon lamp on the digital screen and congratulated you. It was nice to win, but the eyes of the genie flashed in an unsettling way.

 

Her friends were already at the machines.

 

“You made it.”

 

“I won’t be staying long. I’ve taken on a responsibility. You know my young neighbor? His name is Ryan. I’m caring for his goat while he is out of town.”

 

“Did you say a goat?”

 

“You should see how Ryan cares for it. It’s as though the goat were his own child.”

 

“That’s strange.”

 

Rochelle placed the first of her Elks coins inside The Mystical Lamp and pulled its lever. “People do all sorts of strange things when they’re going through something like a divorce.”

 

Someone out in the lounge was screaming a hideous song. Its chorus went: “Pooour some sugar on me!”

 

The Mystical Lamp lit up. It chimed and squealed, and the genie appeared. His wicked grin and eyes congratulated Rochelle before the machine spit out eight tokens.

 

“I didn’t mean strange to be bad. Remember when Charlie died and you spent so much time up in Santa Fe with that group of mystics?”

 

Rochelle said nothing.

 

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

 

“No, it’s okay. I think it’s just the medication I’m taking for these lips, is all.”

 

“They don’t look as awful as you think.”

 

◊

 

Her friends left around 9:00. Rochelle stayed behind. She was hopeful to see Dale, and at 9:15, he walked into the slot machine room.

 

Rochelle swiveled in her chair and acted as though she hadn’t noticed. When he finally said hello, Rochelle didn’t know what to say. “I’m up six dollars.”

 

“I just got back from Odessa,” he told her. “We had a court case this morning.”

 

“How did it go?”

 

He didn’t say anything. It was clear he’d been drinking on the drive home. Dale hadn’t, in the end, gone to UNM or St. John’s. Instead he went to a tiny college in Oregon, received a law degree, and disappeared for a while. When he finally came home, he was a changed man. That’s what everybody said. There were a lot of rumors about what had happened to him. He’d gone crazy, or he’d done too many drugs in South America. Rochelle didn’t care what people said. Dale Envers was the smartest man she’d ever known.

 

The genie’s eyes lit up. A chime belted. Elks coins fell onto the tray.

 

“Look at you,” Dale said.

 

“I’m lucky tonight.”

 

“You always have been.”

 

“I don’t know about that!”

 

Drinks at the Lodge came in small plastic cups. Dale ordered them both a drink, and he drank his fast. His hands and fingers were massive, and the skin on his knuckles was dry and cracked.

 

“Are you going to play?” Rochelle asked. “The machines are loose.”

 

Dale looked uncomfortable on the stool, like a circus animal. He crossed his big arms and peered into the lounge. “I don’t know what to do anymore,” he muttered.

 

“Dale? You know how I’m always getting into things? You won’t even imagine what I’ve signed myself up for this time. I’ve taken on a responsibility. Do you recall that young man who—”

 

“They’re changing everything, Rochelle.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Look around. Do you remember how this place used to be?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Now look.”

 

“I know. It breaks my heart. They used to require a jacket for the men, and for the ladies—”

 

“I don’t mean that. I mean they’re changing everything. The world is off-kilter. Do you know what these fracking bastards are doing in our town? Do you know what they’re doing?”

 

“You mean with the drilling.”

 

“I’m talking the very ground beneath us. They’re pumping water into the ground, fresh clean water that can never be used again. And we have a water restriction in place! We’re in a drought!” A morsel of spit clung to his lip. “And the sinkholes.” He paused. “They’re changing the very geography of this place. The entire goddamn earth, Rochelle.”

 

“Would you like another drink?”

 

“In Odessa,” he said to her, “there’s nothing but white trucks. For miles. Corporate white trucks. And meanwhile the water there is turning cancerous. It’s sulfatic. You can taste it. Children have learning disabilities. Slowdeatha, the residents are calling the town now. Their own town. They mean it as a joke. As in, they don’t really give a shit.”

 

He turned and looked at her as though for the first time. “Your lips.”

 

She blushed. “I know. They’re hideous.”

 

He kissed her, hard. Pain rose through her face and entered her right eye. She thought she was going to go blind. In fact, she did go blind. She heard him tell her he was sorry, but when she could finally see again, Dale Envers was gone. Rochelle collected her earnings from The Mystery Lamp and drove home.

 

◊

 

She couldn’t sleep after that. She ran cold water over her wrists. She poured a glass of wine but felt too dizzy to finish it.

 

She turned on her floodlight.

 

Cline was there, staring at the new light that’d come over him. He hadn’t moved from the pecan stump. He wore a strange grin. She didn’t know how goats slept. This one, apparently, didn’t. The only thing Rochelle knew about goats was that they ate everything. Was it true, or a myth? She decided to find out. She went to the pantry and grabbed a can of black beans. From the freezer she took out a carton of fish sticks. She went out onto the patio.

 

Cline didn’t move. He stared at her. She opened the can and dug her fingers in and pulled out a handful of beans and felt them in her palms, her fingers, before tossing them. They scattered in the dirt. The goat didn’t move. In the mornings, Rochelle often came out here to read the paper; the second fairway was just beyond her gate, and she’d wave at the golfers and take in all that green. But at nights, without light or trees the course gave way to a vast nothingness. The only light was on Cline. It was Rochelle and the goat and nothing around them.

 

The animal hopped down from the stump and inched forward and ate the beans. Rochelle was shocked. She tossed more. Cline ate them. She tossed the entire can into the yard. She expected Cline to eat the can, but he gave it a lazy look and flicked one of his ears at her. Rochelle tore open the box of fish sticks and scattered them throughout the yard. They were still frozen, but Cline followed their path, eating each one without trouble. Finally, he found the empty box. Rochelle watched Cline sniff at it.

 

“Eat this,” Rochelle said and pulled from her purse a few of her Elks coins. She approached the goat, holding her palm out. “Eat them,” she said.

 

Cline pulled one of the coins into his mouth. She felt the goat’s warm tongue on her palm. He chewed and swallowed.

 

“Good,” Rochelle said. “Yes, that’s right. Eat them all.”

 

The animal stared at her. He stopped and was quiet, and Rochelle stared at him and waited. “Come on,” she whispered.

 

The goat looked at her and screamed the scream of a child victim. The noise went out over the neighborhood, over the golf course, over the river. Rochelle rushed inside and turned off the lights.

 

◊

 

Sometimes she dreamt of the day, early in her marriage, when she’d asked Charlie just exactly it was he did for a living. In response, Charlie had taken her in their new car out along Highway 62 to the escarpment and led her up onto one of the shorter mesas. They stood in the dirt near a lechuguilla patch. “Look there,” he said and pointed south, toward the Guadalupe Mountains. “That was once a massive ocean reef.” Long before dinosaurs, he told her, there’d been a great big sea right here, right where they were standing. It’d been filled with sponges and algae, brachiopods, trilobites, single-celled fusulinids, and snails and fish so strange she could not even imagine they once called Earth their home. The seas dried, he said, and minerals preserved the dead. “And now,” Charlie told her, “we use them to live.”

 

◊

 

She woke late. Her lips throbbed. They felt as though they would burst. It took her a while to piece the previous evening together. She went out onto the patio and saw the coins, covered with mucous, in the yard. The goat was missing. He wasn’t anywhere. She worried that if Cline had gotten out onto the golf course, she’d have her membership revoked. She pictured him chewing up the fairways, eating the begonias near the clubhouse. She called. Nobody had seen him.

 

Rochelle didn’t wait to get dressed. Without makeup, in her pajamas, she took to driving around town. She drove up and down Canal Street, over to Halagueno Boulevard. She followed San Pedro Street as it snaked alongside the San Pedro arroyo. The wide creek used to run irrigation from the Pecos for cucumber and onion farms, but it’d been dried by the frackers. Now it held hillocks of box springs and shopping carts. Soon the houses grew smaller; the yards went from St. Augustine to lava rocks. She was in Alegre Vista, the bad part of town. Here the houses had ramps instead of steps. Here were cut-out-of-your-house obese people, hiding behind bedrooms with quilts for drapes.

 

“Cline!” she shouted from the window, driving slowly. “Cline!”

 

Some people looked at her. She knew what they were thinking. A woman with a battered face, looking for her husband.

 

She had no idea what to do. She knew nothing about goats. She knew nothing of their internal lives, their desires—what drove them to escape a backyard or what might drive them to return. She would have given up if she could think of a single thing to tell Ryan that would not break his heart.

 

Later in the afternoon, at a home in Alegre Vista, an unpainted wooden place that looked collaged together from parts of other, long-gone houses, she spotted a small herd of goats in the backyard.

 

“These are my goats,” the old man told her. She’d been out near the fence posts, eyeing the herd. The man must’ve seen her through his back window.

 

“I’m looking for one. His name is Cline. He’s black and brown, and he escaped my backyard early this morning or, who knows, perhaps last night.”

 

“Nope,” the old man said. “These are my goats.”

 

Rochelle didn’t move from the fence. She inspected every one of the goats in the herd. None of them appeared to be Cline.

 

“Get on out,” the old man told her.

 

She left and drove far out from the town, out along the highway and then down a county road of hardened chip seal. The road passed a mobile home park before flattening out along the plains of the desert. This used to be a ranch, owned by a wealthy family. Now there were warning signs everywhere—there were signs all over town. The road thinned to two lanes with no center stripe. The sun was big and white, and the sky looked anemic, as though it were an overexposed photograph.

 

She needed to collect herself. She needed to come up with something to tell Ryan. She understood now that in these years since Charlie’s death she had only been faking her way along, faking it every day: at the slots or at coffee, at church, in the produce aisle. Now with the lips. Now with Dale Envers.

 

Rochelle pulled over to compose herself. She put her hazards on and searched the console for tissues. She found some, wadded and coffee stained, and dried her eyes and cleared her nose. She told herself she was going to be okay, that she had, within her, a deep well of resource and strength. She took a few breaths before looking out to the north, out at a long dry stretch of nearly white desert pocked with creosote bushes and bright red budding ocotillo—a mile or two shy of a pump jack. Cline stood there alone, staring back at her.

 

She took her time. She laughed. She opened the door and stepped out onto the road. “Cline,” she said, and felt relief. “Cline!” she said and walked across the county road. Nobody was out here. The wind was still. Rochelle carefully pulled apart the barbed wire and let herself through, making sure her pajamas did not catch. “Let’s go home now,” she called out and smiled. Cline waited for her. He made a strange movement with his jaw, as though he knew what she was saying. As though he were agreeing with her. “I forgive you,” she said to him and slowly stepped toward him. Cline did not move. He whipped his tail and nodded again. “You’re a good boy,” she said, and, when she was near, slowly took him into her arms and embraced him the way she’d seen her neighbor embrace him. And had you been passing by, had you seen the hazards blinking on the sedan and slowed and looked off to the north for the car’s owner—had you looked in time—you’d have witnessed the world open wide and take inside itself a woman in her pajamas along with a small goat.

 

II.

 

On the evening Ryan and Kendra first pulled into town, a great dark plume of smoke seemed to rise from the ground and hover above Canal Street and darken out the neon signs of the motels and fast food restaurants. This cloud did tricks. It changed shapes, recategorizing itself from a blob into a taut arrow, a diamond, a V. “Look,” Ryan said. “Bats.” Kendra glanced at them for a moment before yawning and going back to her phone.

 

This was the detail TOWBoss had wanted men in their subreddit to find: the moment they knew they’d lost their wives. TOWBoss said it was often not a slap in the face or a tearful fight, but something more mundane. He told users to do something physically exerting and to take days, weeks even, to hone in on the moment that useless cunt ruined your life. He created a thread for responses: The Cunting of America.

 

Ryan found the group by accident. He’d Googled “signs of depression” and “divorce depression” and then “divorce guilty.” And he kept Googling until he found men who felt no guilt nor depression, but searing rage.

 

They railed against the Duluth Model, against vasectomies—what one Redditor called “self-cucking.” A theater in Michigan posted an Equal Pay Night, wherein men paid 25 percent extra for a ticket. The subreddit was outraged. They, along with a pickup artists’ subreddit, flooded the phone lines until the theater had to change numbers. They purchased an entire theater’s worth of tickets and believed the business would be dismayed when nobody showed up.

 

Initially, Ryan didn’t relate to most of the men going through divorce. A lot of them were wealthier than he was. Older, with children. But the rage was something he shared. He read the sub late at nights, after drinking. Some of the men spammed a college’s rape report form with dozens of false reports. Ryan didn’t partake, but he watched the post-act banter.

 

Kendra had left, just left, one day while he was at work. Her things were still in their house. The plan had been for her to become a veterinarian, but she’d failed a few courses and before long Ryan had a job offer far away from the Mid-Atlantic. The job paid well. He’d be working as an engineer for an oil concern. Kendra wouldn’t say yes or no. She lay in bed all day. This was an answer in itself. Finally, not knowing how to convince her, Ryan had purchased a goat at a market. Kendra still had not said yes, though when the time came she climbed into the car with the kid in her hands and told Ryan its name was Cline. He smiled, and they headed west. She left the goat at the house, too.

 

When she had finally called it was from a phone with an Annapolis area code. Annapolis was where she’d grown up. She had family there and old friends. And old boyfriends.

 

It wasn’t uncommon for Ryan to call her at night. Kendra would listen as he asked for a second try or pointed out her many flaws—it was her failure, not his, that’d led them out west—or accused her of cheating or asked if his cock wasn’t big enough, if he was too fat or not romantic enough. If she wanted to date a Black man, a Jew. And Kendra would listen patiently, not saying a word until he was done shouting and done crying. And finally she would say, ultimately, there wasn’t anything to say.

 

After hanging up, he’d hit the thread.

 

At work, when he caught himself looking at a female coworker and thinking slut or gash or cumwhore, he felt guilty only for a second before reminding himself of what TOWBoss had said: this was how Ryan had always really felt. This was Ryan finally being true to himself.

 

He’d never played youth sports. He hadn’t joined a fraternity in college. He’d spent his time alone and happy, he thought, and totally confused at this term he always heard, community, and why people put so much emphasis on it. But one night last week he found himself drunk on gin and weeping with joy for having found ToughToeNails3 and Raw_Hide_ and CraveMore, and TOWBoss, their fearless leader; and when TOWBoss posted about the retreat, Ryan was quick to say he’d be there and was there anything he could bring—anything at all.

 

◊

 

The retreat was held in the tall grass alongside the Rio Costilla, not far from the Colorado state line. There was an RV park and campground further to the south, near where the Mesa Stream and the Cordillera Ditch came together, but TOWBoss had told them no way was he paying the fees, and anyway, they were Free Men.

 

In the winters there were no streams at all, but it was late spring now, and the Rocky Mountain runoff had formed a fast-moving gulley ample with cutthroat trout.

As soon as Ryan arrived he realized he’d made a few miscalculations. He’d assumed the retreat was for getting wasted and talking about women and that the fishing was only a pretext. This was not the case. The men he saw were all in waders and very seriously going about fly-fishing the gulley. Their tents, nearly all of them military-grade canvas, were set up immaculately, taut as drums, not even flapping in the mountain wind. Ryan had stopped in Albuquerque on the way up and had purchased a little pup tent. His rod was all wrong: a spin fishing rig that’d cost him twenty-five dollars. He felt ridiculous unpacking his gear and ridiculous moreover when the other men looked back and spotted him but did nothing more than nod and return to the stream. The wind was coming off the mountains all wrong, forcing Ryan’s hat off his head and making him run beyond the parked SUVs to catch it; and he struggled with the tent poles—what maniac had designed this thing?—and out of embarrassment acted as though he were doing a high-concept comedy act about a man who could not put a tent together. The few men who looked on did not laugh. Ryan wanted to toss his gear in the Subaru and leave.

 

Finally, a squat man came to him and offered a hand. “TOWBoss,” he said. Ryan was taken back. TOWBoss had described his ex as being superhot but batshit. Ryan had figured TOWBoss to be a young and handsome devil. Instead, here stood a man in his fifties, graying, with a mustache.

 

“I’m Ryan.”

 

TOWBoss looked up from the tent poles and grimaced. “Yeah, we still go by our Reddit handles here. For the sake of maintaining anonymity.”

 

“Okay,” Ryan said. “So for the rest of the weekend, I’m still SamDongleson?”

 

TOWBoss nodded. “Over there is SemperFi4121, Luv_StuffNM, CarlosZeroShits, and SquirtMaster500.”

 

“Where is ToughToeNails3?” SamDongleson asked.

 

“Stuck in traffic outside Denver. He’ll be here.”

 

Soon TOWBoss had SamDongleson’s tent up. Looking it over, TOWBoss said, “I hope you have a zero-degree bag. It gets awful cold up here at nights.”

 

SamDongleson lied. He’d brought his duvet from home.

 

After TOWBoss introduced him to the clan, and the clan simply nodded, he asked SamDongleson if he had his tackle with him. Before he could answer, TOWBoss marched to SamDongleson’s campsite and returned with the rod. SamDongleson’s face went hot, but after an inspection, TOWBoss said, “Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t catch good fish with one of these. I had a rig like this as a boy. Held onto it through college. Best rod I ever had.”

 

He handed it to SamDongleson. The other men, each of whom had handmade and intricate flies attached to their vests or hats, quit casting. They waited. SamDongleson took the rod and cast the line out in a long, whispering arch. The line went on forever. It was a glorious cast, a strong and strange cast, and when it came back to him, a trout was on the end.

 

◊

 

It was true that the campsite turned cold when the sun went down, but SamDongleson didn’t mind it. His catch on the first try had become an instant legend among the men. Never mind that the fish was too small to keep. They kept it anyway. SemperFi4121 had smashed its head against a rock and handed the lifeless thing back to SamDongleson. “Take it home and have it mounted.”

 

SamDongleson laughed.

 

“I’m serious. This is a feat worth remembering.”

 

Now, at 8:00 in the evening, the men cooked beans and hamburgers and poured whiskey into cups with Diet Coke and talked about SamDongleson’s catch in a way that made his chest feel big. By 9:30, any trepidation SamDongleson first felt had melted away. The whiskey and the campfire made his face warm, and when he pulled his duvet from the Subaru and wrapped himself in it—and when the other subredditors let out a communal chortle loud enough to bounce along the arroyo—SamDongleson knew it was in good fun, that these men were rapidly becoming brothers to him. He was to become a reference point in their conversations for years. He pictured newcomers to the subreddit. Tell me the duvet story. Fill me in. And SemperFi4121 and Luv_StuffNM and CarlosZeroShits and SquirtMaster500 would let the little pups know just exactly what a classic moment they’d missed out on.

 

Something that struck him was how mild-mannered, even shy, the men were. If they bumped your elbow or knocked over your drink, they were quick with an apology. There was nothing of the anger SamDongleson had expected. If, initially, this had let him down, he soon came to appreciate it. The men finished their meals and tossed the paper plates and plastic forks into the fire and watched the fire change colors as it melted away the chemicals. They told jokes and farted. They stayed out of the deep waters that’d brought them all together—at least at first. It wasn’t until 11:00 that night, when CarlosZeroShits pulled out a joint and the men shared it, that the nature of the outing began to shift. SamDongleson hadn’t smoked pot since high school, and this stuff was a new strain from Colorado, and it sat with him weird, a little too powerful.

 

An older guy, redheaded except where the crown of his head poked through, steeple-steep and burned by the sun, said: “Sometimes, when I think about Helen, I remember that when I snored she had me sleep on the floor of the bedroom. She swore the flatness helped my snoring. She said I didn’t snore when I was down there.  I resented her for it. I felt like a dog or a slave or something. I’d lie there all night, just seething with anger. And then something funny happened. I came to enjoy the floor. I looked forward to it. In fact, I began fake snoring so that she could order me to the floor.” He paused, his hands folded in front of him. “Isn’t that sick?”

 

“Unless you’ve worked on it,” Luv_StuffNM.

 

“What does that mean?”

 

CarlosZeroShits said, “He means unless you’ve turned it into some kind of kink.”

 

“Oh, hell.”

 

“We aren’t here to kink-shame.”

 

The redhead went to retort, but instead he just let out a strange, nervous chuckle. The men were quiet. SamDongleson stared up at the stars.

 

Another man said, “I get to see my two kids every other weekend. I’ve come to dread those weekends. Marsha hasn’t moved in with another guy, but I’m gathering there’s one. And the reality is? I don’t care. At all. About her or about the guy. And I’m beginning to lose interest in my two children. One day they’ll be a new family, and I won’t be a part of that, and it used to keep me up at night but doesn’t bother me at all now.”

 

The conversation went on like this, but SamDongleson didn’t like it. The stories were lame. They were pathetic. Finally, they were clichéd, something he could have heard from any limp-wristed group therapy session in the basement of a church. He straightened himself and prepared to tell them about Kendra and the goat, but just as he began, one of the men said, “You hear that?”

 

“What?”

 

“Be quiet. Listen.”

 

They listened.

 

“Someone’s out there. Someone’s stalking us.”

 

The men looked at each other. TOWBoss stood and produced a buck knife from his boot. The other men followed his lead; SemperFi4121 had a little .22 pistol in his satchel, and he looked more than happy to brandish it. The men went down from the campsite into the arroyo and crept along the gulley, listening for something. TOWBoss raised his hand. The men waited. “Over there!” he said, and they followed him across the gulley, sprinting through the water and up and over the other bar. Then they were in dense juniper brush. They squatted and listened. SemperFi4121 pulled the action on the pistol. “I see it,” TOWBoss said, and a moment later he was screaming and running with his knife out. SemperFi4121 cracked the pistol twice in the air and followed him. None of the rest moved. When the pair returned, TOWBoss had an Allsup’s bag on the end of his knife. A small, wrinkled plastic bag. The men looked at each other and fell out laughing.

 

◊

 

SamDongleson woke up around 5:00 that morning, still drunk. The rest of the men were already at the fire, making coffee. He wrapped the duvet around himself and joined them, but before he could say anything a pair of headlights strafed the site. They disappeared, returned.

 

“Must be ToughToeNails3,” TOWBoss said.

But soon the lights were multicolored, red and blue, and a door opened. Soon somebody was shining a flashlight down onto them. It was a park ranger.

 

She was young and redheaded and wider than SamDongleson, with her brown pants pulled high above her midsection. They watched the ranger struggle down the rocky embankment and into the tall grass. She trained the flashlight on each of their faces.

 

“Y’all have a permit to be down here?”

 

None of them responded.

 

She looked at the Igloo where SamDongleson’s trout sat on ice. “What about a fishing permit?”

 

They were quiet.

 

The ranger responded to a call from her shoulder mic. Her breath was deep in the cold air. She looked at each of them again for a long while but didn’t move or say anything.

 

Ryan found himself saying, “You know, if we ran, who could you possibly catch?”

 

The ranger’s face went red. Or perhaps it was already red from the cold. It didn’t matter. The men giggled. The ranger pointed her flashlight square into his eyes. He knew he was smiling; he knew he was still drunk.

 

“I’ll be back,” she said, and left in the cruiser.

 

The group howled. They hugged Ryan.

 

Only TOWBoss kept his distance. Later he said, “She will be back, you know.”

 

“She won’t,” Ryan said. Ryan said he needed to take a leak, and he moved into a nearby thicket. The men were still laughing.

 

◊

 

His tent was the last one down. It was not yet noon but close, and only Ryan and TOWBoss were left at the campsite. TOWBoss poured more water onto the firepit, making certain the embers were dead. He looked for trash and placed it into a trash bag and then tightened, once more, the cables holding the kayaks to the roof of his car. Ryan ran his hand through his short beard and thought about telling TOWBoss about the goat, about Cline. But there wasn’t any point. It was a boring story, and Ryan had decided to get rid of the animal as soon as he got back to town.

 

He waved goodbye and left TOWBoss to finish packing. On the road leaving the Rio Costilla, Ryan felt freed from a burden. He was hungover but happy, and by the time he merged onto the highway, he sang along to “Ramblin’ Man” on the radio. He passed through Taos going too fast, and soon he was south of Santa Fe and its traffic and into the badlands along US Route 285.

 

He stopped for gas in Vaughn. A thunderstorm was threatening to the west, pulling itself together like the bunches of a skirt. A man, some kid, was wandering between the pumping stations smacked out of his gourd. Ryan offered him five dollars, but the kid grabbed him by the wrist and stared at him. “You’re a hollowed-out soul if I’ve seen one.” Then the kid ran away from him, looking terrified.

 

“What the fuck was that?” Ryan muttered. He got back in the car and turned on the radio. He let the tuner scan, hoping to hear something about the weather and what he could expect for the rest of the drive home. He heard a voice come through, far off, hardly intelligible from the static. He turned the dial and listened more intently. It was clear that the voice was in a language he did not understand, and he turned the radio off and drove for a while, preferring the silence.

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Tiniest Champagne 

Nick Mandernach

 

For no reason I was cruelest to Mom. I groaned when her hearing got bad, forgot birthdays, stole thirty-four thousand dollars. I knew I’d make it right, but didn’t know how. When she got her mouth cancer, I jumped on it. Makeup work dried up, so I left my apartment and boyfriend to be caregiver for the last months of her illness. Mom bought my ticket, set up a room in the back house, died the morning before I got there.

 

I loved my mom and want to tell you something about her. I want you to know how she fought with Spirit Airlines in the fall of ‘98.

 

The two of us were set to do Easter with my grandparents in Tulsa. Mom never got along with them because she wouldn’t walk in the light of God and faith saved my grandpa from cigarettes. The computer said our flight was delayed, which wasn’t a problem until they undid the delay and we were late by being on time. Mom downed two Fruit Roll-Ups and slammed her minivan into an airport lot compact space.

 

We ran in with bags smacking our thighs. Lateness put me on the edge of crying. Sorry to say, I called Mom dumb bitch. When we got to check-in, the guy said my rolling suitcase was too big and I’d have to tag it. Mom said fine. With both arms she tossed the bag at the high counter. It didn’t land the edge, so she tossed it twice.

 

“That’ll just be twenty-one dollars,” the guy said.

 

Mom asked how that was.

 

Spirit had a surcharge for baggage, the guy told us. His hair spiked so sharp it would spear blood if palmed. I’d do anything for him. I was lost from a young age.

 

“Just twenty-one,” Mom said.

 

I squeezed her hand.

 

“Fuel costs,” he said.

 

“Just twenty-one. Why’d you say just?”

 

He raised his hands. “Just the price.”

 

She lost it and pounded the desk. Just Just Just. Mom informed the man of her marital and financial status and called him a traitor. A traitor to what? An announcement came over the intercom: they were boarding for Tulsa. The bag check guy lifted his neck like he was listening to a dark omen and we should too. I slapped her elbow. “That’s us,” I said. The first time I betrayed her. She bit her lip and handed a card over. Mickey Mouse waving at the stars.

 

Mom didn’t look at me when we loaded on the plane and didn’t help me when I struggled with the seat belt buckle. Once we reached altitude the steward rolled the aisles with drinks. Me, I ordered Sprite, mostly for the ice. I loved the tube kind the planes used. I’d stick my tongue in the cold hole and blow in them and roll them around my teeth. I’ve seen that ice nowhere else. The steward asked Mom’s order. She groaned. “I’ll do the champagne.”

 

“Great,” the steward said. “That’ll just be nineteen dollars.”

 

I checked seats around us for an air marshal.

 

Mom reached for her buckle and unlatched it, then dug her wallet out from her back pocket.

 

“That’s fine, thanks,” she said and handed over her card. He gave her a tiny bottle with a short Styrofoam cup. Whatever you’re thinking, half it.

 

She unwound the wire from its neck, tore the foil top, and dumped the shot of champagne. She drank it for ten minutes. Every sip crackled against her upper lip. She looked at the desert under us, wondering who knows what.

 

Finished, she put the little bottle upside down in the cup. Instead of putting the cup in the pouch in front of her, she stuffed it in her crowded purse. A stewardess came by with a trash bag, and Mom flagged her down. “Hi,” Mom said. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t get a champagne I ordered.”

 

The lady apologized and brought another little bottle. Mom gave her a thumbs up and undid the wire ring and tore the foil. She took out the SkyMall magazine and looked through the magic items. Digital clocks with holograms, inflatable movie screens, an encyclopedia with the whole world on one CD. When she finished her drink, she put the bottle upside down in the cup and clacked it all in her purse.

 

Mom hit the attendant button a few times, and the first steward came back. “Hi,” he said. “Never got that champagne.”

 

“Didn’t I?” The steward looked us over. I had visions of prison yards. Maybe Mom and I would share a cell. He went through his little receipts when the plane jostled, and mom’s purse tipped, knocking a bottle out. The steward looked, but I covered the cup with my tiny feet, like I was stretching out. Growing girl. He shuffled to the back and got her that little champagne. Yes, he did.

 

When mom poured this one, she offered me a sip. The foam sharpened to liquid in my mouth and burned my cheeks so bad, I thought the meat was coming off.

 

“Ma’am, minors can’t have alcohol,” the steward said.

 

“Grand Canyon!” Mom slapped my arm. The majestic gap filled the whole window. Red and brown rock cut away, and we saw miles into the Earth. I tried to imagine what could make something like that. Time, maybe. If you haven’t seen the Grand Canyon, I recommend it. One of nature’s wonders in my opinion.

 

There was just a big article on Spirit. The court ruled against bag charges in a class action lawsuit. “Junk fees,” the Attorney General said, also “exploitative.” Mom never got to read that. I was up for a piece of the settlement because of a shoot I did in Atlanta. The lawyers made me fill out an online form. Eight million they owed us, but the check came in six dollars and twelve cents.

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(the sound of children screaming has been removed)

Kira Compton 

 

Twenty minutes before gunfire erupts in the La Villa High School cafeteria, Cass is getting high in the parking lot. This is normal, at least junior year. Since summer, she’s been sort of dating this stoner, Lacey, a senior with a beautiful tan and shaggy bleached hair and a single dangly earring that twists in the wind. She’s so cool it makes Cass sweat, her bra sticking to her skin and a faint musky smell coming from her armpits. Lacey’s perfection bleeds into something unreal, like the teenagers in movies played by twenty-something, hundred-pound actresses. When Lacey smiles, her California teeth shining in the sun, Cass thinks this must be love. And if this is love, it is new and startling, and she is terrified she will ruin it. The worry runs a tired track in her brain. The weed is nice because it is free, yes, but mostly because it stops the background noise in her skull.  

 

They lie side by side in the bed of Lacey’s truck. Lacey finishes the joint while Cass pretends to watch something on her phone. Onscreen, a large, beautiful girl with a septum piercing mouths a song Cass half remembers. Lacey hums along, drawing circles on Cass’s shoulders. Her fingers are normal fingers, chewed nails and calluses, but they sear her skin. If this isn’t love, she doesn’t know what is.  

 

Lacey says something then, her voice raspy with the edges of sleep—she won’t be fully awake until third period. Cass sets the phone between their heads. The song plays on a loop, soft and catchy. Lacey’s tongue pokes out between her teeth, and Cass chases it with her lips.  

 

Probably, that final moment wasn’t so perfect. Morning breath, sunless skies, the pressing need to piss. But this is how Cass remembers it. 

 

◊

 

The exit wound is clean, but the doctors keep Cass in the hospital for six days. The bullet pierced her left shoulder, skating past arteries and bones. The scar on her back will be horrific but superficial. The ER nurse who rebandages her wound tells her how lucky she is. A centimeter to the right, her shoulder would have shattered. A centimeter to the left, she’d have bled out on cafeteria tile. Dead any other way, according to her nurses, her parents, the investigators that stream through her hospital room and pepper her with questions she doesn’t know how to answer. They are unsatisfied with the truth, no matter how many times she repeats it: I don’t remember, I don’t remember, I don’t remember. At least, she doesn’t remember anything worth talking about.   

 

The first day nurse is vigilant with the squat television in the corner of the hospital room, keeping it tuned to sitcoms with chattering laugh tracks. The nurse on day two doesn’t care, so Cass watches the news stations. The shooting segments are nearly identical, down to how they begin: eight smiling faces lined up in a row, school pictures from a happier day. Their names are never there, but Cass doesn’t need names. Ms. Rainier, the lunch lady who wore her hair in intricate twists, who must have spent an hour getting ready the morning she died; Mr. Gonzalez, her freshman English teacher who told her she would love Franny and Zooey; Tim Robinson, who made fun of her belly in middle school; Al Jones, who was always sleeping, always wearing the same wooly black sweatshirt; Tina Holden, who had been drawing terrible anime for years but was just now starting to get good, even had a few thousand followers on Instagram; Tori Holden, beautiful, untouchable, who wouldn’t be caught dead around her weird sister; Mark Patterson, that first, false male crush; Lacey Gold. It’s Lacey’s junior year picture, back when Lacey and Cass knew each other only in passing, before everything important came to pass. Her hair unbleached and long, a respectable shirt creased at the neck. A small, knowing smirk: this is just a photo for the fireplace mantle, something to keep the parents happy.  

 

Sometimes the station throws Cass’s picture up. It’s from freshman year. An XXL Metallica shirt pools around her, a band she’d been so sure she’d love forever but stopped listening to not long after picture day. They play sound bites of her mother’s weepy voice over the photo. It’s what every parent dreads. I’m so fortunate my baby girl is still here.  

 

No stations talk about the shooter. They’ve stopped naming shooters in the last few years, an attempt to withhold the badge of infamy given to people like Harris and Klebold. Now there is just one Shooter, a shadowy figure lurking in movie theaters and kindergartens. Always a lone male, usually killed on site by his own hand or someone else’s.  

 

The news loop repeats itself until Lacey’s face is imprinted in Cass’s vision. When her mother visits at the end of the day, she snaps the television off. Cass still hears that weepy, interviewed version of her mother, more vivid and sincere than the woman in the hospital chair.  

 

◊

 

The first day nurse is back, and Cass is no longer allowed to wallow in the news. High on morphine, she spends the third day on her phone. With the notifications muted, social media offers a spot of low tide. She floats through an endless stream of videos. Cooking recipes with bright yellow rice and perfectly smashed avocado; craft tips for knitting and crochet, watercolor and oil; beautiful women gliding over red carpets, voluptuous gowns clouding behind them; parsed-down, slowed-down movie moments with the wrong music playing; strangers mouthing last month’s most popular tweet; cats leaping on tables and knocking over vases, glasses, laptops; a thousand lessons on wine, lifting, baby seals, traveling solo, tattooing, social justice, DIY home remodeling, how to 5 to 9 before the 9 to 5, healthy eating, meditating, holding on and letting go. She scrolls and scrolls and finds herself.  

 

It’s an eight-second loop of the moment she burst out of the cafeteria. There’s a filter, making her bright and smooth, as though someone has pulled plastic wrap over her skin and tugged. Her cheekbones are jagged. Her eyes sparkle. The blood on her neck seems strategically placed. Over the loop, the chorus of Sia’s “Unstoppable” plays on repeat.  

 

It seems impossible that someone caught this on camera, but here it is, cycling on her screen. Another student captured what they could from the other side of the street. Cass feels nauseous. She feels something else too, wanton and unnamed. She watches herself escape to safety again and again and again. 12.7K likes. 2.3K comments.  

 

She flips to her notifications, which she has been soundly ignoring. Her Instagram is private, and she’d assumed the little pink dot was simply well wishes from friends and family. Instead, there are thousands of follow requests, hundreds of messages. She’s brave, a hero, lucky. She’s been tagged countless times, has her own hashtag now, #cassandrablake. Turns out, someone was livestreaming everything that happened outside the cafeteria, and everything that happened inside.  

 

She flicks her phone off, pulls the pillow over her face, and screams. 

 

◊

 

The fourth day, Cass refuses visitors. She ignores the nurse’s gentle, probing questions. The TV in the corner stays off, the blank screen a wide and empty mouth.  

 

La Villa may not have the highest kill count or the youngest victims, but thanks to the livestream, her school has captured the eye of the nation. Tina Holden’s follower count has gorged itself, three hundred to thirty thousand (Tori Holden’s private page is not among the followers). The last photo Tina ever posted—a progress update on a drawing of a rose-haired anime girl—has gotten two thousand comments. Cass reads them all. This is so fucked and xoxo rest easy angel and i don’t know you but i am so so so scared and lord jesus, we humbly ask of you, jesus, that you will give them life again, for you are our lord jesus who is always with us even in the darkest of times, amen.  

 

When it gets overwhelming, she flips back to Instagram reels. Her usual recommendations are there, but she spent half an hour watching herself escape. The algorithm noticed. For every thirty reels, there’s one of her. Sometimes she is running out of the cafeteria or being carted into the hospital. Friends have leaked old videos, so there are reels of her jumping into oceans or laughing at lunch tables. Slowed versions of Cass and Lacey lean into each other as the song “Mary on a Cross” twinkles over them.  

 

There’s a version of Cass that’s outraged, but the rage feels young and muffled beneath a broader feeling, a heady sense of anticipation. Hundreds of messages sit luridly in her inbox, unopened. Strange numbers call, and she lets them slip to voicemail.  

 

That night, she goes to sleep early and dreams of The Shooter. Not the boy who shot her, but The Shooter, a vague and menacing figure in camo pants. He’s chasing her, but in the strange logic of dreams, she has her hands around the barrel of his gun and is pulling. Every time she wrestles the gun away from him, another one respawns in his hands, an AK-47 or an MR-16 or another string of letters and numbers she doesn’t understand. The dream doesn’t change. Just this endless chase and tug-of-war, a video loop that never ends.  

 

◊

 

On the fifth day, Cass unprivates her accounts.  

 

Her last post is from the summer, a beach day group photo. Her head is on Lacey’s shoulder. She remembers that Lacey’s earring kept getting in Cass’s face, and when she blew it away, Lacey giggled. This fascinated her—Lacey was too cool for giggling—so she blew on Lacey’s cheek again and again, repeating the experiment until their friends griped at them for ruining the photo. 

 

That evening, Cass has over fifty thousand followers. Huddled under hospital covers, she listens to the voicemails of strangers. Sponsorships, all from figureheads of companies she’s never heard of. She’s an influencer now, the face of something larger than herself. The voices offer condolences, tell her she’s a hero, and doesn’t she want to keep making a difference?  

 

She stands to make a life-changing amount of money. No more rent stress for mom, no need to work a second job. Cass will be able to move wherever she wants after high school—she won’t even have to finish high school, won’t ever have to go back if she doesn’t want to. She’ll bulldoze the cafeteria to the ground and build the Lacey Gold Memorial Garden in its place.   

 

It’s close to midnight when she chooses a number at random and calls. A woman picks up on the second ring. Her voice is metallic over the phone. When Cass signs her life away, she pictures flowers curling through the cracks of cafeteria tile: begonias and lilies, columbines and dead nettle.   

 

◊

 

Cass watches the livestream of the shooting just once, there on her final day in the hospital. 

 

Strike while the iron’s hot, she’d been told. They’ll only have the nation’s attention for so long, and if they want it to matter, they’ll need to be shocking: a livestream of a livestream with Cass watching, still threaded with IVs and a heart monitor. 

 

A woman with severe blonde hair has driven up from LA. She helps Cass get ready—brown dusting under her eyes, her hospital gown askew so that the edgings of her bullet wound are visible. In the mirror, Cass looks strangely beautiful. She’s become one of those twenty-year-old, hundred-pound actresses playing the movie version of herself. 

 

Before they go live, a company-hired therapist checks in with her over the phone. The therapist wants to make sure she is okay reliving the event. She’s sure, yes, okay, but the truth is that she won’t be reliving it—she hardly remembers living it.  

 

What Cass does remember: Her own sweat-stench. Ripe, pungent. She’d pissed herself, the urine soaking into her crotch, her thighs, making her dark jeans darker. She smelled like a wild animal, pure adrenaline. An ape sleeping inside her all this time, awakening in a frenzy and pounding against the inside of her chest: Survive this! Survive this! 

 

She remembers Tori curled over Tina. Hindsight tells her they are dead, but memory tells a different story. Tori shields Tina in a sister’s embrace, simple and protective. Maybe it was only at school that the sisters hated each other. Maybe, back home, they shared a bathroom, a bedroom, a common love for mint chocolate chip ice cream. Maybe they didn’t speak at school because they spent so much time speaking everywhere else. Maybe, back home, the love between them was endless. In her memory, Tori is still breathing.  

 

She remembers being shot, though in a mosaic sort of way, a kaleidoscope of red and orange, yellow and black. Iron in her mouth. Salt in her eyes. Something lancing her shoulder, vaulting her awake. Heat against her neck, gunmetal searing her hands.  

 

She doesn’t remember the shooter. She doesn’t remember taking the gun. She doesn’t remember the last thing Lacey said, the last important thing. Cass can picture the curl of Lacey’s lips moving up and down, but though she has run through the memory every night since, the words are gone. For the livestream to be worth anything, it would need to show her that. She can see it—the camera sliding out of the cafeteria, down the hall, through the parking lot. Sun striking the lens as it presses into the truck bed. Two girls curled into one another, center screen. Chapped lips. Meaningless noise. Lacey’s words, articulated clearly in the shell of her ear. Cass would hear it and know all there was to know. Everything they had been promised would come to pass. Yellow tassels and cheap wine and swollen feet and a boring middle age. They would get it all. The camera would watch them through the years, having no reason to pan to dark cafeteria doors.  

 

Bright lights shiver. The livestream begins. Cass watches what she can’t remember.  

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The Puzzle Committee

R.M. Fradkin

 

We, the members of The Puzzle Committee, are here to help. You will stay until you complete the puzzle. No one will be allowed to leave until we have successfully completed the puzzle.

 

Snack breaks are allowed, within reason. If we suspect you are taking snack breaks to avoid working on the puzzle, your snack privileges will be revoked. Ditto for using the bathroom.

 

If you’re not sure whether two pieces fit together, we, The Committee, will decide. You say these are a perfect fit, and yet they wiggle. We know a fit when we see it, like pornography. See, these present not a shadow of a doubt. Nothing can come between these two.

That is why sometimes it is necessary to visit The Committee.

 

If you haven’t yet completed the border, might we recommend that as a good place to start? It’s always useful to circumscribe endless possibilities with an impenetrable border. Sorting out the edge pieces also gives extraordinary satisfaction. Filling in the border will take longer, of course, but we must not deny ourselves that sweet feeling of accomplishment.

 

At this point, there are several courses of action we could recommend. We might pursue an image/color scheme, in which the pieces are sorted and assembled based on their relative hues and whatever hints of object can be capitalized on. On the other hand, we might pursue a solely shape-based scheme in which the pieces are sorted like so:

 

The four-hole is a seeking, yearning piece, often frightening because of the gaping depth of his need.

One-knobs are aware they have but one thing to give, but they give it well.

The double-knob is the most perplexing, as he comes in the standard, opposite-wing variety, as well as the unbalanced varietal, which often tilts into irresponsibility.

Finally, we come to the triple and quadruple-knobs, the scarcest of our breeds:

These exotic birds know their worth and give themselves to the other pieces but rarely.

 

We could also pursue a hybrid image-based and shape-based scheme, but we might get mired in the quandary of whether to put a piece with his knobbed companions, or whether he should go with his color-mates—the mossy greens, for example, or the leafy ones.

 

To use the box or not to use the box. That question has absorbed us and inspired much debate in our ranks over the years. As The Committee itself has not come to a final decision on this matter, you may use the box for now, if you wish. However, you will have to endure the knowledge of having used the box and the resulting diminished sense of purpose for the rest of your life.

 

We notice some of you hover around the snack table longer than is absolutely necessary to procure provisions. We remind you of the potential consequences of these actions.

 

Although it may seem that we, The Puzzle Committee, have all the time in the world, in fact, we do not. Outside wait families, couples, organizations, hospital wards, and bands of friends who have come to us to help them make their puzzles whole. While perfection is our ultimate goal, perfection completed with a sense of urgency is preferable.

 

We, The Committee, are no strangers to unraveling. We lost some of our number in the acrimonious Boxers vs. Not-Boxers Schism of ’99, although we spend our waking hours and our not-inconsiderable mental powers fighting for cohesion. That is why no one can rest until every piece is together. That is why no one can leave.

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In the Nude

Brendan Gillen

Charlotte lived in the Village, where the buildings shared narrow courtyards, so it was not a matter of neighbors seeing. Of course they saw. She sometimes waved. The uptight spinster across the street who pulled her curtains. The young men whose kitchen window was adjacent to her bedroom. They did not stare. They smiled giddily and waved and went about their business. Who knows what they said when they ducked out of sight? Charlotte didn’t care. Her days of giving a damn were long gone.

 

One afternoon, the police came. The knock was polite. Charlotte answered in her robe. She could have been their mother. They hardly looked old enough to drive, let alone carry weapons.

 

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” said the bearded officer. His nameplate read: Finn. He seemed to be in charge. “There’s been a report of a disturbance.”

 

She clocked the shaven one eying her figure, which she maintained with water aerobics.

 

“A disturbance?” Charlotte said. “Here?”

 

“Yes, ma’am,” Finn said.

 

Charlotte wondered if one of them always spoke, if their roles were set, or if they sometimes traded.

 

 “I make a real effort to keep to myself,” she said.

 

“It has nothing to do with noise, ma’am,” Finn said.

 

The clean-shaven young man adjusted his belt. His radio chirped. His name was Bradford.

 

“There was a call that you’ve been going about your apartment in the, ah, nude and whatnot.”

 

Charlotte bit her cheek to keep from laughing. In the nude! For such a progressive city, New York’s sense of civic propriety was practically Victorian.

 

“I see,” she said. “Is it illegal? This is my home.”

 

“Not exactly, but if it continues to be a public disturbance—”

 

“Who was it that complained?”

 

“We can’t divulge that information, ma’am,” Finn said. But Charlotte knew. In some ways, she’d been waiting for it. She didn’t know the woman’s name, but they’d passed each other plenty of times on the street. In another life, they might have been friends. In this life, her neighbor was stoop-shouldered and severe, and she pushed her chaotic hoard of belongings around the neighborhood in a rolling cart.

“All we’re asking,” Finn continued, “is that you cover up.”

 

Instinctively, Charlotte released the clutch she held on the collar of her robe so that it fell open at her throat. Bradford stole a glance at her cleavage. Finn dropped his hand to his taser.

 

“Ma’am,” he said. “It’s a simple request.”

 

She thought of Donald. How could she not? His mustache. His overcoat. Always layered. Their marriage was full of love. Over thirty years. Toward the end there was no sex, not because they didn’t want it, but because of his condition. It worsened precipitously in the final months. He was hollowed out, hunched over. Clothes hung about him as though they’d been donated by a much bigger man. It was awful to see. Yet Charlotte had felt an undercurrent of liberation. An unburdening, a shedding of skin. She waited until Donald passed to express it. To do otherwise would have been cruel. She sold the house, bought the studio in the city. She began to paint, went for cocktails. It wasn’t even a year before she brought a man half her age back to the apartment. She was taking control of her grief. Of her life. She knew Donald would have understood. She’d given up her career at McCann to make their home, raise their boys. This was her time. Yes, he would have understood. She was certain. She was the only woman he’d ever loved.

 

“Let me ask you something,” Charlotte said to the officers. “Have either of you tried it?”

 

Finn cleared his throat. His hand twitched on the taser. “Ma’am?” he said.

 

“Walking around the house,” she said, “in the nude.”

 

Bradford swallowed. The arrowhead of his Adam’s apple dipped.

 

“Ma’am, this doesn’t have to be difficult,” Finn said, losing patience. “This isn’t a negotiation.”

 

“Oh, it’s not difficult at all,” she said. “You’d be surprised how good it feels. The world is constrictive enough.”

 

“I’ve tried it,” Bradford said, seeming to startle himself. “Sleeping naked, I mean.”

 

“See?” Charlotte grinned. She clapped involuntarily. Heat rose to her face. “And?”

 

“It was okay. Little chilly.”

 

“Enough,” Finn snapped. He’d been undermined.

 

“Oh, give it another shot, Bradford,” Charlotte said. “You too, Finn. Your wives or girlfriends or boyfriends, whatever, will notice the shift, trust me. Especially after a long day in those uniforms. Don’t they itch?”

 

“Wives,” Finn said, flustered. “Listen, if we get another complaint to this address? We won’t be so cordial.”

 

Charlotte looked Finn in the eye and smiled. He flinched, and she saw his guard drop. It was all very silly. The roles we convinced ourselves to play.

 

“That won’t be necessary,” Charlotte said. “Message is loud and clear. All I can say is that I hope you gentlemen find comfort in your own skin before it’s too late.”

 

“And I hope this is the last we see of each other,” Finn said. One of their radios crackled. “Good afternoon.”

 

Finn turned and made his way from the threshold. Bradford lingered a moment, and, ever so slightly, smiled, as if to say, Thank you. Then he ducked out of sight.

 

Charlotte closed the door, went to her nightstand, leaned against the bed. She picked up the framed photo of Donald, touched his face through the glass. He was squinting in the direct sunlight, ballcap pulled low, one of their last journeys to the desert.

 

“Miss you, love,” she said. “We would’ve had fun. I’d’ve loosened you up.” At least she would have tried. But had he never passed, would she have arrived here, at herself? It was impossible to know.

 

She went to the window and looked down on the street, the slow-moving traffic, the bustle and flow of a Manhattan afternoon. The spinster was not at her window, but Charlotte could see the tunneling squeeze, the decades of accumulation. She decided she would get dressed and go over there, try the third-floor buzzers until she found the right one. Maybe all the woman needed was someone to talk to, or, more likely, someone to listen.

 

For now, she closed the curtains against the glare, dropped her robe, studied her figure in the mirror. It was something you had to work for. Not the body, the love for it. That alone was worth the heartbreak.

 

“Oh, I hope you’re watching,” she said.

 

Then she danced to the song in her head, the one Donald loved most. A slow bolero, a languid ache, an invitation to the rest of your life.

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The Wedding Photographer Photographer

Matt Leibel

 

The wedding photographer photographer was busier than ever. Couples had decided that typical wedding shots felt too cliché; they wanted photos that merely suggested the existence of these moments instead. The wedding photographer photographer was acknowledged as the best in the business. He understood how to capture the essence of a wedding photographer at work because he’d been a wedding photographer before branching out to this extra, some would say unnecessary, level of remove. He’d always been interested in the art of looking: at museums he was less concerned with observing the art, and more concerned with observing the people observing the art. He made notes: “Woman folding arms impatiently; child with tongue sticking out; man pawing at his own goatee while looking at a chiaroscuro sketch by Van Dyck.” The WPP began taking pictures of museumgoers who were deep—almost erotically deep—in the throes of the act of looking. His fascination with the second-hand extended even to his own marriage. He had become interested in watching his wife engage in acts of intimacy with strange men. (By which he meant strangers to him; the men didn’t have to be particularly strange, and usually weren’t.) In fact, watching her excited him more than being with her himself. This was not a deal breaker—he’d explained his proclivities early in their relationship. They’d met at a wedding, actually. She was a wedding planner, and he was photographing the wedding photographer according to the nuptial couple’s very specific needs (with a focus on the WP’s two-toned bowling-style loafers, a particular fascination of the bride-to-be’s). It was at the WPP’s request that the voyeuristic scenarios with his own wife became more and more elaborate; a second-order element was added as a second stranger was hired to watch the wife’s encounters, and the WPP took candid photos of this stranger. The WPP’s wife especially liked these shots because of the expression the WPP was able to capture on the face of Stranger #2: usually a look of titillation mixed with confusion mixed with the terror of an interloper on the verge of being found out, even though he was an invited guest. Everything seemed to be going well for the WPP. His particular personal and professional desires were being largely satisfied. This is more, he thought, than most people could say—until he noticed what seemed to be a new set of characters at the weddings he worked. These weren’t the usual wedding crashers, nor relatives of the couple who’d grown antisocial after an intrafamily spat. No. It was only after a handful of these weddings, and after talking to friends in the biz, that the WPP realized the truth: these new faces were wedding photographer photographer photographers. The WPPPs were hired to photograph him, and him alone. And the sudden switch from observer to observed unnerved the WPP more than he might have anticipated. He told his wife that he couldn’t be part of a photography sandwich, to which she replied, rightly, that this was exactly what wedding photographers had been dealing with ever since the WPP became a WPP. And that if the WPP couldn’t handle the emergence of the WPPP as the next evolution of a fast-changing industry, maybe it was time for him to move on from the job—and for her to move on from him. And, indeed, just weeks after the WPP’s wife moved out, he quit working entirely. He parked himself on his sofa in front of the TV, where for weeks on end, he did little but watch a show about characters who do nothing but watch other characters on TV. Soon, word of the WPP’s downfall got around, and paparazzi (mostly WPs, a few WPPPs, and even other WPPs with whom the WPP had worked) gathered around the WPP’s windows to snap candid pictures of him. An exhibition of those photos, eventually, appeared at the MOMA. The wedding photographer photographer never attended the show, but he spent many hours online, looking at pictures of museumgoers, who themselves were looking at other museumgoers, who were looking at still further museumgoers, who were looking—from what he could tell—at nothing at all.

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When There’s No One Left to Point At

Eric Scot Tryon

 

On Fridays after school, we rode our bikes to the liquor store to buy sour candy, the kind in large plastic bins with big metal scoops. Sour peaches, sour rings, sour bears and worms and sharks, sour lips and sour rainbows and sour kids. Emily never had money, so I paid, which was fine.

 

With the bag of candy tied around my handlebars, we pedaled to the high school where we sat in the bleachers, on the top row, and pressed our backs to the metal railing. The first sour bite was the best. The way my jaw clenched like a fist even before the sour hit my tongue.

 

Meanwhile, the field below was electric with teams practicing and students buzzing, and we played a game called That’s Gonna Be You. Emily and I were still a year away from high school and joked that watching from above was like watching ourselves in the future.

 

“That’s gonna be you,” she’d say, laughing and pointing to the football player dragging his feet, half a lap behind the team.

 

“That’s gonna be you,” I’d say and shoulder-bump her, pointing to the cross country runner leading the team in stretches. Blonde hair pulled tight in a ponytail, she barked orders and counted to ten.

 

Besides pointing out our future selves and sucking the sour off gummy soda bottles, we also complained about our parents. To make Emily feel better, I made stuff up about my dad yelling and being an asshole, but really he wasn’t. He was the kind of dad who always listened, even if sometimes I wished he talked too.

 

But Emily’s dad was another story. Three months ago she found out he had another family. Family #2, she called them. She found a birthday card in his office desk with a drawing of a dad, mom, older boy, and a little girl with red curls. Emily was blonde and an only child. She didn’t tell her mom, but she told me as we pushed sour rings on the tips of our tongues. How many could we fit until one snapped? She didn’t cry like I thought she might, but instead pointed at a group of boys huddled like vultures under the bleachers across from ours, secretly smoking and punching each other in the arms. “That’s gonna be you.”

 

Emily started questioning everything about her father. Whenever he wasn’t home, which was a lot—work trips, golf trips, who-knows trips—she assumed he was playing catch with his son or teaching his redheaded daughter to ride a bike. When he was home, she tried to sniff foreign odors on his shirt as he hugged her goodnight. And when the light hit his mouse-brown hair at just the right angle, she swore she saw hints of red.

 

The more she shared, the less I shared. Having to deal with Family #2 was so much worse than my mom drinking too much white wine after dinner. My mom didn’t get silly-drunk like in the movies, but the next day she wouldn’t remember what we’d talked about. I had to get used to cloned conversations. Plus I was running out of bad things to make up about my dad, so mostly I just listened and searched the field for future-me.

 

Then Emily’s Dad called her Dylan accidentally. Twice.

 

“Dylan doesn’t sound anything like Emily,” I said. “How can the dillweed make that mistake?”

 

With a mouth full of sour gummy bears she’d scrunched together until four became one, Emily said, “Whatever. That’s gonna be you,” and pointed to a funny-looking kid sitting against the goalpost doing homework alone.

 

“Yeah? Well, that’s gonna be you,” I said and pointed to a cheerleader practicing her leg kicks. She looked ridiculous, and I knew that would get Emily good because she swore she’d never be a cheerleader. She said cheerleaders were just decorations for guys, and how stupid was that? I was waiting for her to point out the worst guy and say it was me, but she didn’t. She just sat there working her tongue, unsticking bears from her back teeth. Finally, she said, “Shit, Dylan’s even a cooler name than Emily.”

 

#

 

Today, as I’m scooping the last of the sour fish into the bag, Emily says she has something big to tell me. But later, with our backs against the cool metal bars and one handful of sour keys already gone, she still hasn’t said anything.

 

“So, like, did something happen?” I ask, as the marching band marches in a giant circle.

 

“Nothing happened,” she says, tears in her eyes for the first time. “But, like…I realized something.”

 

I want to give her a hug, but I’m not sure if that’s the kind of friends we are. So, like my dad, I sit quietly. Waiting to listen.

 

“What if, like…” She stops to tie a sour rope in a knot, then bites off one end. “What if I’m Family #2?” She looks away. “What if it’s not them. What if it’s me that’s Family #2?”

 

The worst part is I don’t know what to say because she could be right, because who gets to choose? I try to imagine what my parents might say, but I’ve got nothing. So I reach into the bag and grab two sour cherries—her favorite—and give her one. Then she grabs two sour bombs—the strongest of them all—and hands one to me.

 

“That’s gonna be you,” I say and point to the girl walking like a horse with high knees, twirling a baton.

 

“That’s gonna be you,” she says and points to a big kid banging a drum hung around his neck.

 

And then we can’t stop. We point out everyone on the field. The football player doing pushups, the sprinter collapsing on the grass, the kid in crutches asking girls to sign his cast, the couple holding hands, the boy getting yelled at by his coach, the girl with pink hair. That’s gonna be you, I tell her. That’s gonna be you, she tells me. And we eat. We eat until the sour scrapes our tongues and cuts our gums.

 

Eventually the sun drops behind the mountains, and the lights of the field click, then buzz, then shine. That’s gonna be you, she says and points to a kid sitting alone, picking grass. And to the coach blowing his whistle. And to the boy trying to do a cartwheel. That’s gonna be you, I say and point to a girl sprinting as if she’s late, backpack bouncing side to side. And to the girl crying into her phone. And to the girl who was running laps when we first sat down and is still running laps, her face bright red, and she has not stopped, has not even slowed. That’s gonna be you, that’s gonna be you, we say until all the teams have packed up their equipment and left, until even the non-athletes, the randoms and slackers and stragglers have decided it’s time to go home, and there is only a pile of sour sand at the bottom of the bag, and our mouths are swollen and raw, and we have pointed at everyone until there’s no one left to point at, and still we have no idea what kind of people we are going to be.

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The Star Buyer

Will Musgrove

 

 

The cop told me it was a Hollywood myth that you only get one phone call after being arrested. He said I could call anyone I wanted, even a lawyer. But I only needed one call. I called my son and asked him to put my granddaughter on the line. He did, and I told her to go outside and look at the stars.

 

A few weeks ago, I bought a bunch of stars at fifty bucks a pop. After reading a few science articles on space travel and Dyson spheres, I calculated how many greats were needed until humanity left planet Earth behind. I’ll never be rich, not on a bus driver’s wage, but my great-great-great-great-grandchildren could be.

 

The stars showed up yesterday in the mail. Well, their locations showed up, written on filigreed certificates. You get to name the stars you buy, so I named them not after people I know, but after people I want to know, my future grandchildren. I read each name aloud and placed the certificates in a Folgers coffee can. With the can in one hand and a shovel in the other, I walked outside to bury the stars in my backyard as a sort of celestial inheritance.

 

My next-door neighbor, Frank, raised his head over our shared fence and asked if I was digging for treasure. I shook my head and told him I was burying it, told him about my not-so-quick get-rich scheme. In a few hundred years, what would be the difference?

 

“Oh, Bridget and I saw the same infomercial,” he said, pointing at the ground, a gesture I took as stay there.

 

Frank disappeared into his house, which looked exactly like mine, like everyone else’s on the block, and returned carrying a picture frame. He turned the frame, revealing a star named after his grandson, George.

 

“His birthday is coming up, and we wanted to get him something special,” Frank said.

 

His star’s location seemed familiar, so I opened the coffee can, and, sure enough, Frank’s star matched one of mine. Frank scratched his chin like, How do you have my grandson’s star?

 

I went in and dialed the infomercial number. A man answered, and I explained the situation.

 

“Stars are really big,” the man said. “Can’t you share?”

 

I imagined my future relatives traveling light years in stasis only to wake to a flashing sign reading: Welcome to George, the Brightest Star in the Universe. I said no, I couldn’t share. I said I wanted my money returned, and the man hung up. When I called back, no one answered.

 

Online, I looked up the address of the star-selling company and scribbled it on a Post-it note. I got in my car and drove. I wanted a refund, or else a different star. I imagined the man on the phone searching star maps for a replacement, imagined him describing the light each star gave off. I wanted to make it right. I wanted my future grandchildren to point at their stars and say, “Boy, my great-great-great-great-grandfather sure was a savvy guy to make such a smart investment.” I wanted them to look at their stars and think of me.

 

Driving down the highway, I considered light, how it takes millions of years for the light of a star to reach us, how, by the time it does, the star might not be alive, how the light might be nothing more than a memory. Red and blue stars pulsed behind me, and I thought about light, about going so fast I stretched for millions and millions of years.

 

I imagined my future relatives basking in my light, saying to one another, “Can’t you share? Can’t you share?” And me, by then no more than a bundle of particles and photons, replying, “No need. Don’t you see all this light? Look at all these stars I bought you, and for only fifty bucks a pop.”

 

“Pull over,” came the voice over a speaker.

 

In my rearview, I counted half a dozen cop cars. My speedometer read 110 miles an hour. Not quite the speed of light. A line of yellow barrels protected the median. Swerving, I bumped one, then grazed the side of a police car, and, boom, I went supernova, exploding into a burst of glittery stardust.

 

Guns drawn, the cops approached my car and ordered me out of my vehicle. I did as they said, and they cuffed me before bringing me here. Now, I sit beneath humming florescent bulbs, telling my granddaughter to look up, look up, to never stop looking, to remember that, one day, the light of those stars will light her children’s children’s children’s children’s way.

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The Chili Cook-Off

In the ninth grade my face got all trucked up in a car accident. The next year my high school let me be a judge at their annual chili cook-off. Ever since, on the eve of the season’s first freeze, I make a big pot, the beginning of two months of competition. I find the process soothing. My recipe changes from year to year. I’ve never written it down and being prone to heavy drink, I invariably forget something. My maxim is to keep it simple. This is Omaha. Don’t need to be showing up at the American Legion Hall with braised short-rib chili.

            The onset of winter around here is a curious thing. There’s excitement in the air despite everyone knowing that in a month we’ll all be begging for spring. My chili season routine goes as such: on Wednesday I hit the grocery store. Thursday, I dice everything up: onions, peppers, garlic, and tomatoes. Fix a drink. Brown the meat. Refill my drink. Add everything to the stock pot, stir it real good, and let it rest in the fridge overnight. All day Friday I cook it down, adding beer/coffee/broth as needed. On Saturday I bring it to whatever cook-off is happening. Sundays I’m hungover. Monday and Tuesday are pretty inconsequential.

            I’ll be up front about it, one of the buddies I was in the car wreck with didn’t make it out. He was sixteen, two years older than me, and he was driving. The other buddy, Tim Slobowski, was my age. We were on a rural stretch of road, what we called out north. Slobowski was ejected from the car. His brain went without oxygen for forty-five minutes, and he spent the next six weeks in a coma. After that they moved him to the Madonna House Rehab Hospital, where he doesn’t know who he is or where he’s at. I used to visit, but it’s been a while.

            People at the Hy-Vee see what’s in my cart and give me looks of approval, the man making midweek chili. Such jaunt in my step. My go-to protein is a mixture of Italian sausage and ground beef (1:3). In the past I’ve done some wild experimentation, depending on how frisky I’m feeling. Have used everything from elk to pulled pork to brisket. Where I draw the line is chicken, white chili, which I won’t do. In a few weeks my hunting buddies will start getting last year’s venison out of their deep freezes and I’ll make a few batches with that, but until then, I’ll keep it simple. Italian sausage and ground beef.

            As I exit the store, the Salvation Army bell ringer is going at it like he’s John Bonham. I wasn’t planning on donating (no idea where the money goes), but I admire his tenacity. I stop the cart and fish around in my pocket. The drummer does a triplet. He’s wearing fingerless leather gloves. The bell is vise-gripped to a hi-hat stand. He goes at it like a trap set. I bend down with my dollar. He looks at me. We recognize each other. He grins in a way that says he knows it’s me, and yeah dude, it’s him: my old friend, Doogie. He stops mid-song, looks in my cart. “Whoa motherfucker,” he says. “You making chili?”

            Aside from family, I’ve known Doogie longer than anyone else. His stepdad coached our little-league team, this mustached dude who’d pitched collegiately and was obsessed with bunting. Later, Doogie and I did drugs and played in punk bands together, which is when he dropped the name William and took on Doogie.

            “Doogie,” I say. “What the fuck man, I thought you were in Denver.”

            “Made it nine months out there, but I’m back. Been so for a few weeks.”

            I nod at the tithing bell. “The hell is this?”

            “The fuck’s it look like? Denver’s not cheap.” He lowers his voice. “You still…”

            “Gave it up,” I say. “Coming on two years.”

            “Congrats. That’s why I moved. Worked for a while too, but you know that junk is everywhere.” He puts a hand on the case of beer in my cart. “Haven’t kicked this, I see.”

            “Technically that’s for the chili.”

            “Fuckin A.”

            “Hey man,” I say. “Is this what it looks like?”

            “Not really.” He looks around. “Actually, maybe.”

            Ninety percent of my friends from his days are gone. Some left to reinvent themselves and some passed away and some got married, had kids. I spent a decade moving around. Whenever things came close to falling in place, something came up. Emergency dental surgery or a bad breakup or x, y, and z. I pull a twenty from my billfold. Doogie pockets it on the sly and gives the bell a thwack, thanks me for being a good friend.

            In the three years I’ve been back in Omaha, I’ve entered forty chili cook-offs. Placed in the top three at thirty of them, fifteen of which I won. I know it’s a weird hobby, but if my biggest proclivity is an obsession with making chili, I consider myself healthy. It’s Thursday morning and my stomach is weightless in anticipation. Been since March that I last made a batch. I hone the chef’s knife, ready the cutting board. The tips of my fingers get prickly. I start my audiobook: Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It’s been my soundtrack for the last two chili-cooking seasons. Over the next couple months I’ll take it to the house three, maybe four times. Put it away for the year, recharged.

            I am in control of what defines me. Covey hammers that. Don’t have to be defined by my past. Humans have the power to choose. That’s why I moved away. Fuckers all saw me as the dude that had been in the car accident. For many years I was erratic. Covey helped me regain control. It’s like he says, so much about who we are is determined in the split seconds between stimulus and response. And never forget that you have the power to choose.

            The baseball team that Doogie and I played for—the Omaha Tornadoes—the summer after sixth grade we made a run at the Little League World Series, the event that’s televised on ESPN. All season we used the thought of ourselves on TV as motivation. A communal fantasy that grew out of control. We made it to the final round of regionals in Wichita, KS. One more and we were in. We could practically see ourselves in the nation’s living rooms, dominating with small ball. The hope for a better tomorrow. We ended up losing in the last inning of the championship game and shortly thereafter found out that we hadn’t even been competing in the tournament that climaxes on ESPN. We’d been in some rinky-dink knockoff version, lied to by our parents and Doogie’s stepdad, who knew we’d be motivated by TV. The whole experience ruined baseball for me.

            I love waking up on chili cook-down Friday. Last night it was hard to fall asleep, similar to the last day of school as a kid, a memory I barely remember, but it was embryonic, the windows open to perfect weather. I put the pot on the range and slowly bring it to a boil, stirring in cumin, cayenne, and paprika. Half a Hershey bar. A quarter cup of cold brew. Couple tablespoons of Mexican coke. Last year I fucked around with soda syrup as the sweetener. It was close to what I wanted, but the line to toe was thin and it made me feel like I was trying to be something I’m not, unbearably pretentious.

            All told I spent a decade away from Omaha. Went from Tampa to Lake Charles, Asheville and Pensacola—once for love, once for a bar, and the others for no real reason, reinventing who I was every few years. One of the things I consistently missed were the chili cook-offs, nothing like they are in the heartland. To the credit of Lake Charles, they had a bunch of well-attended gumbo cook-offs around Mardi Gras, but I only like that stuff in extreme moderation. At the last one I attended I was eating a bowl in front of the guy that made it—duck and andouille—and on my second spoonful I bit square into a piece of buckshot. I pulled the BB from my mouth and the guy started laughing like a goddamn maniac. I didn’t think it was funny, though. That incisor is still chipped.

            I bring the chili to a hard boil and kill the heat. Add in some bone broth and work it to a simmer. I can’t stress enough the importance of a quality stock pot. I’ve got a top-end chef’s knife as well, German forged steel. Those Japanese brands look sweet, but I’ve heard they require a ton of maintenance. Even though it’s been years since my last relationship fell apart, I still fantasize about the gift registry she and I put together, sorry we didn’t stay together long enough to see it through. The kitchen we would’ve had.

            The cook-off they let me judge after my accident was our high-school’s big annual fundraiser, climax of the blue-and-white weekend. The three judges are usually big-time alumni. It’s considered an honor. That’s what my mom kept harping on after I was invited. I was hesitant, but she insisted. And she was right. Whole crowd gave me a standing-o when I took my place. I was seated next to a famous movie director, class of ‘79. He’d just finished filming something with Matt Damon. It’d been the talk of our high school. The emcee put two flights of chili in front of me. The director noticed my shaking hands, leaned in and said that Matt Damon had found my story very compelling. By the time I reached the next taster, I’d settled down. I took a bite and pretended to gag, real cartoon-like. At that moment everyone in the audience knew I’d be fine. They beamed up at me, proud of the way they’d rallied around the poor kid. Helped him overcome adversity. Many years later I drunkenly tried getting in touch with the director to see if he could help me out. His people said he was on location in Hawaii, and that if he didn’t get back to me in a few months, to follow up. But he didn’t and neither did I. The whole thing was stupid. What was I expecting, him to cast me in some fucking Jason Bourne movie?

            After three hours of simmering, I give the chili my inaugural taste. Swish it around like a wine snob. As anticipated, there’s something missing. Always happens with the season’s first batch. Last weekend I emptied my pantry, which I do at the beginning of every October, keep the spices and toss the rest—hard to innovate while constipated with yesterday’s shortcomings. The pitfall is that this chili needs something I don’t have. It’s no problem, though. Hy-Vee is close and maybe I’ll get to see Doogie again. Been thinking a lot about how I got off the path we were on and he didn’t. The emptiness he must be feeling. I’ve been there.

            After the dust from the car wreck settled my parents hired an attorney. The hairpin turn we wrecked at wasn’t labeled. No guard rail either. Everyone’s assumption was that we’d been drinking, but we hadn’t been. My buddies and I were just out for a joy ride, Nebraska in early April, looking for sandhill cranes. When we launched off the road my stomach shot through my throat. Time elongated into milliseconds I could see and touch. There wasn’t any calm or clarity, or whatever people tell you they feel in the moments before death. It’s all a lie. I only felt terror and all I wanted was to be alive. Then we crashed in a soy field and started rolling. My attorney was a real bulldog. The county was on the hook. My folks put my settlement money into a trust. Every month until I turn forty I get two grand. It’s been a blessing and a curse.

            This time when I approach the entrance to the grocery store there’s no Salvation Army bell ringer. Honestly, I’m disappointed. The vision of Doogie’s face has been in the back of my mind. How worn down it looked, like an old catcher’s mitt. I shouldn’t have left him in the lurch all those years ago when I up and moved away, cutting ties with who I was. From eighteen to twenty-five, he and I travelled the country pursuing punk-rock fantasies. Taught a bunch of shit-hole bars a thing or two about having a good time. Made caricatures of ourselves and called it profound. Swore we were pursuing the life we wanted, fast and hard. Paycheck to paycheck. Then the pixie dust wore off and I moved away without saying much. Just needed a change.

            I meander through the grocery store. Grab some high-end bone broth, a couple ghost peppers, another can of tomato paste. An orange (for the zest). When I’m leaving the store I hear someone wailing on the bell. I’m thrilled. Can barely contain myself as I turn toward him. He’s wearing a necktie as a headband, Judas Priest long sleeve under the Salvation Army vest. Drums a line of blast beats.

            “Doogie!”

            “My dude. Back again.”

            “Needed a few things for my chili,” I say. “How’s it going, man?”

            “Nice as shit out today. I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s any correlation between weather and generosity. Far as I can tell, it’s random.” He swings the donation kettle back and forth. “Bunch of fucking cheapskates.”

            “Dude, you know what I was thinking about after I saw you the other day? Remember that year we almost went to the Little League World Series?”

            “Twenty-three years ago,” he says. “It’s like they say, time flies when you’re having fun.”

            “You want to ditch this and come over for some chili?”

            He fidgets around. “Got any of that beer left?”

            “Eighteen at least.”

            He removes his vest and says, “I’ll hop in with you.”

            The neighborhoods we used to live in are nice now, full of street tacos and cocktail bars. Our drug house was gutted and turned into a vinyl-listening library, $79 a month, one of the best record collections in the Midwest. When we lived there, we were constantly having to scrape together extra money to get the utilities turned back on. Place had revolving doors. My room was on the top floor. Doogie’s drum set was in the basement. Despite sound proofing it with egg cartons and junked mattresses, I heard every beat of his practices, and he was always at it. Ever since I’ve needed a box fan to sleep, that dump was so loud all the time. Makes me glad it’s something pretentious now.

            Immediately upon entering my house, Doogie says, “Good fuck. It smells fantastic.” He checks out my trinkets. I’m a collector of several things. Bobbleheads and postcards and koozies, most extensively. When I started accumulating them, I stopped getting tattoos. Win-win. I’ve got koozies from all over the country. Some from places Doogie and I went together, like the bar in the lobby of the heart-shaped hot-tub motel in Jackson, MS. First time we tried meth.

            “You really hate having a warm beer and a cold hand,” he says, looking at all of them. “I’ll give you that much.”

            “See the one from Slims in Raleigh?” I say. “That place was insane.”

            “Oh man, I still feel bad for that guy. Dude who put us up. He didn’t deserve that from us.”

            “Yeah,” I say. “I forgot about that. Certainly not my proudest moment, but he had money and was an asshole to begin with.”

            I get us a couple cans of beer. The chili is simmering on the range. I prepare the fixins: a bowl of Fritos, Crystal and Tabasco hot sauce, fine-shredded cheddar. In Nebraska it’s customary to serve cinnamon rolls with chili—they get us started on it in elementary school—but I don’t play by those rules. Fuck that. I put the chili in front of us, normal fixins. Before taking his first bite, Doogie wafts it under his nose. “What’s that I detect,” he says, “nutmeg?”

            “Maybe.”

            He wolfs the bowl down without another word. I’d go so far as to say I knocked it out of the park. Again.

            “Well,” he says. “Pretty decent.”

            “Pretty decent? Variations of this recipe are going to win a ton of cook-offs.”

            “I’m no chef de cuisine, but it seems like you over handled it a bit. Folks want a robust, simple chili. This tastes like it doesn’t know what it wants to be. You know what I mean? It lacks an identity.”

            “Yeah?”

            “The fuck do I know, though, I’m a Hormel man.”

            “Get out of here with that. Seriously?”

            “You like what you like.”

            The guy’s got dirt under his fingernails, sniffles a lot. Almost forty-years old and still rocking a Judas Priest shirt. He’s as lost as I once was, an addict. I shouldn’t fault him for the Hormel comment. He doesn’t know any better. I grab us another couple beers. “Listen,” I tell him. “I think I’ve got something that could help you out.”

            “Less cumin in the chili?”

            “Funny,” I say. “I’m trying to be serious for a second.”

            I keep several copies of Seven Habits around the house for this very occasion, a friend in need. I hand him the multi-disc audio edition. He holds it like a problem child with the body of Christ. “You might think it’s bullshit,” I say. “But it worked for me.”

            “Worked like how?”

            “Helped me get in control of everything. I had a victim’s mentality for pretty much my whole life. Bad things kept happening to me because bad things always happen to me. You know what I mean? That type of philosophical outlook.”

            “Fuckin A,” he says.

            “Friend to friend, I’ve been where you’re at.”

            “Look, man,” he says. “I thought we were here to eat chili. If I wanted to be proselytized, there’s any number of people more qualified than you that I could’ve gone to. No offense.”

            “Trust me, I was the same way. This shit, it can take a load off.”

            “That’s not the point.”

            “What is the point?”

            “I don’t want unsolicited life advice. Especially from someone like you.”

            He’s the same way I was, hardheaded. Covey helped me realize that.

            “Just take it,” I say. “Do whatever you want with it. Doesn’t matter to me. But take it, just in case.”

—

I won the first two cook-offs of the season. Spent three weeks honing my recipe and then boom, I took O’Leavers on the first Saturday in November—$100 bar tab—and The Winchester the following weekend, where this biker in his seventies finished second. By the time they announced the results the biker was damn near incoherent, prison-sleeved and in the throes of what appeared to be a psychedelic trip. For winning that one I got a toilet trophy and fifty bucks. The biker got a bottle of blackberry brandy. He had a tough time figuring out what it was.

            I am a well-oiled machine. My house smells delicious all the time. If they made a chili-scented candle, I’d be the target demographic.

            I kicked the shit out of The Sydney’s cook-off. They never stood a chance. Two different yahoos had chickpeas in their chili. To them I said, “Why does the sexual deviant like your chili so much?”

            Huh?

            “Because the chickpeas.”

            And I rode off into the sunset, gift card in my pocket.

            Bribery and ass kissing are rampant in the competitive chili scene. It’s always better to have a panel of judges than audience voting. No telling whose team folks are on. Another pro tip: invest in a decent crockpot. Nothing too expensive, but nothing too shitty. People judge at either end. What can I say, they eat with their eyes. And if the cook-off benefits charity, do a little research first. Or just avoid them altogether. They bring out some serious amateurs. The ones at old-school bars are where it’s at.

            Oh, and don’t show up with bean-less chili. Whenever someone does, we talk shit behind their backs.

            I open the year six for eight. Lost two to charity, but what the hell, they were for good causes. Not like it’s my fault that the parents of the Kingswood Athletic Association have unsophisticated palettes. Keep your crown, you well-done assholes. And never again lie about how the baseball season could end. None of those cook-offs matter anyways. My green jacket, the creme de la creme, is this weekend at the Homy Inn. Culmination of the season. The place is an institution, beloved by the types of lawyers/doctors/rich folk who give big at my high school’s annual fundraiser. While most cook-offs get between ten and twenty entrants, the Homy will have upwards of fifty, judged in stages. $500 on the line. I’ve never won. Last year I took third. For it I’m breaking out the big guns. I started my prep work a week ago. Went and bought a pork butt that I cut into inch-thick strips. They’ve been curing in crab boil and canning salt in the fridge, a cup of sugar. I’ll smoke the slabs into tasso a few weeks from now. What I’m after in the meantime are the shoulder blades. Left a good amount of meat on them. They’ve been in the curing solution. I’ll add them to the chili at the very beginning, let them season everything. All told it’s a two-week process.

            They ought to crown me champion now, Friday afternoon. This batch is incredible. The pork bones worked wonders. After a few hours of simmering, I was able to shred the meat right off. It’s got a feathery texture, packed with flavor. Perfect complement to the Italian sausage and ground sirloin. I should’ve been writing down my recipes all along. For posterity. Maybe open up a chili parlor someday. Write a cookbook and have Matt Damon blurb it. At the very least, I’d be able to see what the changes say about who I became, no longer the brooding dude on the verge of an episode. I am the chili master now.

            On Homy Inn Saturday I wake up at the crack of the sparrow. Begin the day with thirty minutes of yoga on YouTube. Follow that up with fifteen minutes of mindfulness, guided by YouTube. Then I take a hot shower. After the shower I pull the chili from the fridge and put it on the range, slowly bring it to temperature. I eat a bowl straight up, no garnishes. Phenomenal stuff.

            The cook-off starts at two. I show up at one, bring it in the front door. The bartender takes it to the back, where they’ll transfer it to a quarter tray, to be labeled and served from steam tables. The right way to do things. Total anonymity. I settle into the bar, have a beer and a shot. My chili might be superfluous, but when it comes to drinking, I’m a meat and potatoes guy. More and more people arrive with chili. Some look like straight-up yokels. I rule them out. The rough looking ones are the ones I’m worried about. That old-timer with the neck tattoo, for example, he ought to get a first-round bye. Respect for the lifers. The bar’s capacity is a tight 175. Today they’ll reach that. The bartender brings me another beer and addresses me by name, asks how my chili turned out.

            “Pretty good,” I say.

            I’m tempted to tell him how awesome it is, but I’ve overheard a bunch of contestants running their mouths and in this arena I want to be the strong and silent type. As Covey would say, the choice is mine.

            Forty chilis have been entered. The bar is wall-to-wall. A couple sore-thumb tourists pump money into the claw machine, nothing in it but a big pink dildo. What a dive, they laugh. Folks always act surprised when they realize said dildo is greased, which should probably be a given. The Homy has been putting this on for over twenty years. They’ve got it down pat. Chilis have been separated into groups of ten. The first round will be judged by the audience. Every attendee has been assigned a flight and given a scorecard. Top three from each will advance.

            Minutes before it’s about to start, the front door swings open. Standing in the gust of frigid air is my old friend Doogie. He’s carrying a greasy crockpot, balances it against his stomach with one hand. Fist bumps the door guy with the other, who then hustles it to the back. Doogie catches sight of me. I raise my glass. He gives me a stern-faced thumbs up, goes and registers with the event coordinator—the octogenarian proprietress who takes absolutely no shit from anyone. For the past fifteen years she’s made a pot of chili for people to eat during Monday Night Football and for my two cents, it’s pretty good. I expect her to give Doogie a hard time, but she doesn’t. In fact, they seem to have a rapport. He comes to my side and orders a drink and I say to him, “Didn’t know you were into making chili. Which number is yours?”

            “You know it’s against the rules for me to divulge that information prior to the completion of first-round voting. I may be a fuck up, but I’m no cheater.”

            “What do you say we get a little side bet going?”

            “I don’t approach making chili with a results-based mindset. I trust what I cooked. For me, the joy is in the process.”

            “You listened to the book,” I say. “Awesome, man.”

            It’s vintage Covey. Always act with the end in mind.

            “The hell I did,” he says. “What’s the bet? I’ll take your action all day.”

            “Forget about it. You’re right about being process based. It’s all in good fun. I’m glad to see you’re doing well.”

            “Five-hundred,” he says.

            “You’re good for that?”

            “Here he goes again, Mr. Shit-Together.”

            He does look healthier. Not as strung out.

            “Fine,” I say. “Five-hundred it is.”

            I’ll take this dickhead’s money. Kickstart him into helping himself.

            “I don’t even care for chili,” he says, “but having tasted yours, I know I can beat it. Someone has to put you in your place.”

            “Yeah?”

            “See you at the finish line, asshole.”

            I’m starting to remember why we had a falling out. Dude’s kind of a prick. Only reason he started at second on our little-league team was because his stepdad was the coach, the mustached man who orchestrated the whole ESPN lie. I’m sorry to say it, but his stepson is about to lose five-hundred bucks.

            Will I make him pay?

            Goddamn right.

            The emcee starts the event. First round will take an hour. It’s warm in the bar, spirited. These things aren’t really about winning. They’re about Midwestern camaraderie. The shared misery of another winter, born to die in Nebraska. This bar regular I’m friendly with, Rat-faced Johnny, plays Motörhead from the jukebox. He knows I’m a fan. “Here’s to pissing in the wind and shitting where you eat,” he says. Motörhead ends and Iron Maiden comes on. Rat-faced Johnny does it again.

            I sample all ten chilis I’ve been assigned. Have a sip of Aperol spritz between each. Don’t care if the drink looks ostentatious, it’s a great way to cleanse the palette. Three of the chilis are decent. Four are palatable. And three are downright lousy. If they’re any indication as to how these people eat at home, I feel sorry for them. No doubt I’ll advance to the next round.

            Doogie shuffles to my side and says, “I know which one is yours. Heavy on the cumin again.”

            Before I can retort, the bartender cuts the jukebox—Rat-faced Johnny is not amused, middle of his favorite Black Sabbath song—but they’re ready to announce the first-round results.

            “You think you made it through?” I ask Doogie.

            “At this point,” he says, “it’s outside my control and therefore, I am unconcerned.”

            Another of Covey’s tenets. Even if he’s mocking it, at least he listened.

            “By the way,” I say. “That was a bullshit move your stepdad pulled. Convincing us we were going to the Little League World Series.”

            “You’re telling me,” he says. “I had to live with the fucker.”

            The emcee fumbles around with the PA system. People are mirthful. Days are getting longer. We’re past the peak of winter. In no particular order, the emcee calls the numbers of those that have advanced into the finals. Of course I am among them. Doogie stays calm throughout. “You make it through?” I ask.

            “Man,” he says. “Why’d you have to bring up my stepdad? I’m not trying to think about that guy right now. Fucking ruined my day. That’s a bullshit move.”

            The last thing I expected was tenderness. “You’ve been a prick all afternoon,” I say. “I was just giving it back.”

            “I know why you’re obsessed with this chili cook-off bullshit. It’s because they let you judge that one in high school after the accident went down. Got me thinking, man, when’s the last time you’ve been out to see Slobowski?”

            He knows not to go there. I shake my head.

            “Just a question,” he says. “I’m genuinely curious.”

            “You know the answer.”

            It’s not a conversation I care to have with anyone, let alone an old junky buddy.

            “Anyways,” he says, eagle eyeing the barroom. “I’ve got to go catch up with some folks. Good luck with the next round.”

            The bartender kicks the jukebox back on. Rat-faced Johnny raises hell, says it skipped his songs and ate the remaining credits. Now it’s playing some bullshit Aerosmith song and everybody in the state of Nebraska knows he hates them. Johnny’s nickname isn’t flattering, but it sure does fit. The bartender tells him to settle down. Not like the jukebox is going anywhere.

            The judges take their places at the head table. Two of them I recognize, the chef from the Boiler Room and this stout guy named Dario, owner of Dario’s. Best steak frites in town. The third judge I’ve never seen before, some lady who teaches culinary arts at the community college. Over the years I’ve learned not to overthink what the judges might be thinking. There’s nothing their reactions can tell me about chili that I don’t already know. I lean back and enjoy my spritz. Peace be the journey. I order a refill on Doogie’s tab.

            The judges head to the backroom to deliberate. I sample all ten of the finalists. Seven are solid. Sometimes I get too cocky and underestimate my competition. Wouldn’t be the first time hubris has fucked me. Three of them even, I wouldn’t be ashamed to lose to. One seems to have hit exactly what it’s going for. Perfect combination of heat and flavor. This brilliant texture to it. Oh wait, it’s mine.

            Nice.

            The judges emerge with their results. The emcee has an envelope in hand. He delivers a little hoopla. Thanks us for being here. Says they couldn’t have asked for a more qualified panel of judges. And what a way to kick off the homestretch to Spring. My nerves ratchet up, suspended in the in-between while this guy finishes his spiel.

            No matter the outcome, I know in my heart of hearts that I am a winner.

            I advance into the top five. Those that have been eliminated go and collect their consolation ribbons. The emcee whittles out two more. I’m in the top three. Soon they’ll be etching my name on the plaque, forever part of something bigger than myself. Doogie is stone-faced. I have no idea if his chili is still alive.

            Just name the goddamn winner already.

            And then they do.

            William “Doogie” Donahue.

            The audience gives it up for him.

            Son of a bitch.

            He tries to accept it stoically, but has a teenager’s sheepishness when he takes the trophy. Looks out into the crowd and raises his arms. I’m pissed off, but oh well. I’ve got to admit, his chili, #6 of the finalists, was good. Nice and hearty. Midwestern. I put my hands together for him, my old friend.

            There’s always next year and the next year and the one after that. Adapt and survive. Maybe I’ll open a chili parlor when my two-grand allowance runs out, call it Slobowski’s. I’ll go out to the Madonna House to see him soon. It’d be nice to catch up with his mother as well. I know she was bummed when I quit visiting, disappeared in pursuit of something I never found. Didn’t even bother returning her calls. But I’m back in control now, helping old friends win chili cook-offs. Some much-needed meaning in Doogie’s life.

            The bar settles down. Empties by about half. It’s 4:30 now. In an hour it’ll be dark. For finishing second I got a $200 tab, which I’m putting to good use. Gave rat-faced Johnny permission to drink on it until it’s gone. Would’ve thought he won the lottery when I told him.

            “It was a well-fought battle.” Doogie comes up and shakes my hand.

            “You showed me,” I say. “I apologize. Got ahead of myself.” It’s important that I be the bigger man. “You do Venmo?”

            “Cash only, bucko.”

            He follows me to the ATM. I hand him the five hundred and say, “I guess we’ll see each other when we see each other. Until then, be well.”

            “You know what my chili was?”

            “What?”

            “Just Hormel that I doctored up a little bit, you self-righteous son of a bitch.”

            “Motherfucker.”

            He walks away—middle finger up—out into the dregs of winter, a champion.

 

 

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